


Horn and Ivory

by epic_shish_kabob



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, I'm not super concerned with canon, i don't want to tag too much, maybe? - Freeform, takes place some time around s3 or s4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-01 06:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15768150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epic_shish_kabob/pseuds/epic_shish_kabob
Summary: A wave of strange dreams sweeps Washington.ON HIATUS





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I wish the X-Files monster of the week episodes were weirder. Sometimes I also wish there was more casefic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 911 gets a strange call.

“911 what’s that address of your emergency?”

“I’m on the subway and there’s a woman- I don’t know who she is and she’s shouting and. I don’t know what she’s saying- it doesn’t sound like words but she seems really upset.”

“Where are you?”

“Uh- we just left Farragut, I think.” 

“Okay. Help is on its way. How long has she been screaming?”

“She just walked in, maybe five minutes ago. She looked kind of bad and was making this whining noise, like crying, except higher pitched and than she just started screaming for no reason. Just like that.”

“I’ve got an officer on the way. He should be there when you stop at Dupont” 

“Are he going take her to the hospital? I think she’s drooling.” 

“Yes. Has anyone tried to calm her down?”

“Yeah, one guy tried to hug her she whacked him. I don’t think it was on purpose. She was kind of flailing around and smacked him in the face and than everybody backed off after that. I tried to talk to her but I don’t think she heard me.”

“Okay. You should call back if anything else happens.”

“Yeah.”


	2. Eyelids

Scully pinched the place where bone and cartilage met on the bridge of her nose. “Someone has a breakdown and you assume it’s an X-File?” she asked, taking a big breath in and blowing it out through pursed lips in a quiet puff. 

“She’s been asleep for a week. Nobody sleeps for a week.” Mulder was a step ahead of her, striding along the hospital hallway with enthusiasm usually reserved for reports of alien abductions. Scully’s shoes ticked on the green and white tiles. Each step sent a dull ache through the pads of her heels. 

“Head trauma can trigger a coma. It's likely she fell and hit her head during this episode,” she said to Mulder’s shoulder. It came out angrier than she meant it to, and the melodramatic expression of hurt he gave her over his shoulder made guilt settle under her ribs. 

“Come on, Scully, it’s not a coma. She moves in her sleep, her eyes twitch. This is something else,” he said as he pushed open a door and waved her through with a theatrical sweep of his arm. She raised her eyebrows at him and he straightened up with an eye roll.

Slatted window shades on the opposite wall painted stripes of twilight all around the room. In the center of the room, a woman lay in the hospital bed, her head in the center of the pillow and her hair fanning out in a triangle below her shoulders. Her arms lay neatly by her sides above the blankets like a child pretending to sleep. Scully could see her chest expanding and caving with deep breaths. Up. Down. Up. Down. By her side sat a young man, holding her hand with head bowed. She scrambled along the wall until she found the light switch and flicked it on. 

"Emmanuel Cruz? I'm Agent Mulder and this is Agent Scully. We're with the FBI," Mulder said, dangling his ID between forefinger and thumb. The man jerked his head up and dropped the woman's hand as if self-conscious. He said nothing. 

"That is Sarah Reyes, correct?" Scully stepped forward to tap on the crisp fabric of the pillow next to the woman's head. 

"Yes," Cruz mumbled to the edge of the hospital bed. 

"Did Sarah have a history of mental illness?" Mulder stepped forward to place a hand on Cruz's black cotton clad shoulder as Scully snapped sickly green latex gloves on her wrists. 

“Are you allowed to do that?" Cruz asked as she peeled back Sarah's eyelids. 

"Yes." She didn't look up from where she shone blue-tinged white light into Sarah's eyes. "Pupils don't dilate," she muttered to herself. "Why don't you talk outside?" she said, turning to Mulder with an expression that she hoped he understood as leave me alone. 

"Sure," he said. She couldn’t tell if he had understood her, but he pulled Cruz out of the room all the same.  
Scully peeled the pastel cotton covers off Sarah's body, covered in a cloudily transparent purple hospital gown. Her heartbeat was rhythmic and slow. Not dangerously slow, but unnaturally slow. She shifted when the stethoscope patted her chest, squirming her shoulders before settling back in, her face now tilting toward the windows.  
Scully paused.  
Sarah's fingers twitched when pricked. She didn't react when Scully spoke, and when trying to snap her fingers produced no noise, knocking the penlight against the rails of the hospital bed created a metallic ringing next to her head. She did not react. Scully peeled her right glove off and reached for a syringe

Cruz blinked as they stepped into the flatly-lit hospital hallway. Mulder smiled and nodded, leading him down the hall, one hand still firm on his arm. 

"Must be relaxing. God knows I wish I could sleep for a week," he said as they reached a slat-backed bench. "Has anything like this ever happened before?" He settled into the bench, stretching out long legs. Cruz sat beside him, resting the balls of his feet below the bench as if trying to conserve space. 

"No. She had," Cruz blew breath out of his nose. "-issues. I'd come home and she'd be lying on the bathroom floor. Wouldn't move, wouldn't talk. I tried to get her to talk to someone but she always said that she was fine. It didn't happen a lot, so I just left her alone." He paused. "But nothing like this. She used to get nervous in crowds, but that was all. She’d never scream or… run around or anything." 

Mulder nodded. "Did she ever have trouble sleeping?" 

"I don't know. I usually fall asleep before her," Cruz said. 

"Did she sleep too much? Oversleeping, nodding off during the day, taking lots of naps?" Mulder asked. 

"I don't know." Cruz scowled at him. "What is this about? She slept like a normal person. Why do you care?"

"Just trying to figure things out." Mulder glanced up to see Scully finish some interaction with a harried-looking doctor and hurry toward them, a file folder clutched in hand.

"I have everything I need," she said. 

"So do I." He nodded and clapped Cruz on the back. “Get some rest," he said. Cruz nodded.

The parking lot was soaked in orange light, coming down from street lights propped up on scratchy concrete cylinders. It was well and truly dark now. Mulder paused next to the car they had come in, parked beneath the third light from the doors of the hospital. "Learn anything interesting?" he asked. 

"She reacts to physical stimuli, but not noise. I'm going to try and get a blood check done. I suspect she's being sedated," Scully said, shrugging. "Did Emmanuel Cruz say anything?"

"Not really. He said she got depressed sometimes but nothing like this ever happened," Mulder replied. "He was pretty shy."

Scully snorted. "I could tell."

"Maybe Sarah Reyes saw something she shouldn't have," Mulder mused to himself. Scully could tell he was trying to create something supernatural to rationalize it with. "But why sedate her? We know they're not afraid to kill." He wrenched open the car door and dropped into the grey fabric seat. "Maybe they need her alive!" He bounced in front of the steering wheel like an excited child. Ridiculous as the theory was, she did find his enthusiasm a little bit endearing. 

Scully raised an eyebrow. "Who need her alive?" she asked. 

He grinned. "I have no idea."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt like the pacing was kind of weird.


End file.
